Saturday, 10 August 2013

Today's ConservativeHome newslinks
Rajoy to Cameron over Gibraltar: Hasta la Vista, Baby
Screen shot 2013-08-10 at 08.55.41"Prime minister Mariano Rajoy refused to back down in the dispute over the Rock as ten Royal Navy warships prepare to set sail for the Mediterranean. Making it clear he was ready to damage relations between the two countries to protect national pride, he pledged to take ‘proportionate measures’ in response to London’s announcement that a rapid reaction force will depart on Monday." - Daily Mail
Pickles fears royal crest on UK birth certificates will be replaced by euro logo
"All babies born in  Britain could have the EU flag stamped on their birth certificate within three years. Eric Pickles said there was nothing he could do to prevent the emblem from replacing the royal crest on birth, marriage and death certificates. The Communities Secretary warned the move was part of a Brussels plot to brand people as European citizens ‘from cradle to grave’." - Daily Mail
  • Us? Force the EU logo on birth certificates? Perish the thought, say Eurocrats - The Guardian
  • EU "declares war on caravans with plan for MoT-style tests which will cost families hundreds of pounds" - Daily Mail
Osborne pledges to catch tax evaders…but only one has been nabbed to date
OSBORNE BLUE TIE"The Chancellor was bullish as Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) published a new FBI-style list with names and details of ten alleged major tax dodgers and swindlers. Collectively, the group are said to have cheated UK taxpayers out of more than £24 million. The agency last year published for the first time the names and photographs of its top 20 most wanted – but its update revealed that only one person from the original list has been caught." - The Times (=C 2£)
  • UK recovery starts to gain altitude -Financial Times (£)
  • British exports to countries outside EU soar to record £80million - Daily Mail
  • "The cargo cult of Thatcherism holds tight money as an article of faith" - Janan Ganesh, Financial Times
The Daily Mail on CCHQ's refusal to release membership figures: Cameron must stop alienating the troops
"In the early 1950s, the Conservative Party had three million paid-up members. Under Mrs Thatcher, the Tories could boast more than one million registered supporters. And now? Central Office refuses point blank to say how many there are – prompting one senior MP to speculate that the membership is under 100,000. If correct, this would represent a fall of 185,000 since 2005, the year David Cameron became leader, determined to ‘detoxify’ the Tory brand." - Daily Mail
  • 'Dire’ fall in Tory membership a threat to election victory -Daily Telegraph
  • The Times joins the Telegraph and Mail in pressing for transferable tax allowances - Times Editorial (£)
> Yesterday...and the day before...and the day before...and the day before...and the day before...and the day before.........and the day before on ToryDiary: Why can't we be told how many members the Conservative Party has?
Those vans: ASA to investigate
Screen shot 2013-08-10 at 08.57.39"The advertising watchdog is to investigate the coalition’s scheme under which vans drove through London with slogans calling on illegal immigrants to leave the country. The Advertising Standards Authority said it would look into the “go home or face arrestâ€� campaign after receiving 60 complaints. The Home Office, which was responsible for the advertisements, said it would respond in due course." - Financial T imes
  • Sikh leader says that illegal immigrants want to leave Britain -Daily Mail
Mike Weatherley MP "receives Twitter death threat after speaking out against Russia's anti-gay laws"
"Mike Weatherley, the MP for Hove and Portslade, East Sussex, wrote to Mr Cameron to say that Britain 'has a duty not to stay silent' over anti-gay laws passed in the lead up to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. He received the message: 'Kill Weatherley' from a twitter user with almost 1,500 followers. Mr Weatherley said: 'Twitter trolls cannot be allowed to hide behind their computers when making threats like this." - Daily Mail 
> Today: ToryDiary - Twits - and worse - on Twitter
Rob Wilson MP urges police to seize BBC documents
Screen shot 2013-08-10 at 09.01.27"He wrote yesterday to Mark Rowley, the assistant commissioner for specialist crime, and asked him to obtain from the BBC the names of 150 senior managers who received payoffs and those who authorised them…Mr Wilson suspects that some present or former BBC managers may be guilty of misconduct in a public office by arranging payoffs for colleagues far in excess of their contractual entitlement. Some of those managers consequently received excessive payoffs." - The Times (£) 
Traditional Britain Group meets traditional newspaper probe. The Independent has some fun with "associate of Rees-Mogg" Geoffrey Lauder-Frost (i.e: the Somerset MP has met him once)
"62-year-old Mr Lauder-Frost is a veteran of the right-wing fringe of the Tory party with a political record that dates back to Margaret Thatcher’s time. This was interrupted in 1992 when he was imprisoned for two years after stealing £110,000 from a London health authority where he was employed as payroll operations manager. At the court hearing, where he pleaded guilty to eight specimen charges, his lawyer said he had taken the money to pay for a custody battle with the Polish ex-wife." - The Independent
Miliband Helpful Colleague Latest. Burnham tells the Guardian: Labour must set out his stall by next spring
Screen shot 2013-08-10 at 07.01.28"Labour's leadership must put its cards on the table before next spring and produce a set of policies which define the party or risk defeat at the next general election, the shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham, has warned. In a candid interview with the Guardian, Burnham voiced concern that time is running out to mount a coherent challenge to the coalition. The party under Ed Miliband still had time to present a distinctive economic alternative, but he warned that waiting longer would mean that the window will be closed." - The Guardian
Danny Alexander LibDem funding bias claims latest
"Danny Alexander personally intervened over a new £300m road running through a marginal Liberal Democrat constituency, a project that was approved even though a business case for it had not been completed. In what opponents say appears to be a case of lobbying for a project to boost his party’s electoral prospects, documents show the Treasury chief secretary took a close interest in the Manchester airport link road, which received £165m of government funding." -Financial Times
  • Huhne lands energy job paying £100,000 for just two days a week - Daily Mail
Charles Moore: Charities should answer to the public, not to the political elite
Screen shot 2013-08-10 at 09.02.37"Having been on the board of several charities, I recognise Sir Stephen’s type (though none of those I tried to serve ever employed such creatures). We have grown used to such people in politics, bureaucracies, education, the NHS, the BBC and big banks. But in charities, because we instinctively want to trust them, we have been less alert. They are part of the modern ruling class of managerialists who are not interested in what an organisation achieves, but in how it can be controlled and what rewards it might bring them." - Daily Telegraph
  • Charity pay defender Sir Stephen Bubb's organisation helped to pay for his 60th birthday party - Daily Telegraph
  • Six of the eight countries receiving the highest amounts of British aid are set to implement space programmes - Daily Express
News in Brief
  • Millions face higher bills under plans for compulsory water meters - Daily Telegraph
  • Marching Season 1) Sinn Fein calls off Apprentice protest in Castlederg after Villiers pressure - Newsletter
  • Marching Season 2) Police injured amidst republican rioting -Belfast Telegraph
  • Marching Season 3) Police injured amidst loyalist rioting - Belfast Telegraph
  • Mugabe signs secret deal to sell uranium to Tehran - The Times (£)
  • US steps up drone strikes in Yemen - The Guardian
  • Drive to end stigma of mental illness across Scotland - Scotsman
  • Wind farms paid £30 million a year to stand idle because the grid can't cope with all the energy they produce - Daily Mail
  • England’s batsmen go walkabout in Test - The Independent

Posted by Britannia Radio at 14:52